“We need to get her an eye exam too. Can we do that today?”
“Of course! But first I’ll need to get some information about both of you.”
She takes us over to a table so we can start to fill out the paperwork. “All right, sweetie, what’s your name?”
“Stacey.”
“And what’s your last name?”
I look up at Jake, not sure what I should say here. We didn’t really think this far ahead. Just like before, it’s Jake who renames me. “Cha...Chang,” he says. He pats my back. “She’s a little shy.”
“Am not,” I mutter.
“And how old are you, Stacey?”
“Ten.”
“Oh, so you’re a big girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I say with teeth clenched.
“And is this your daddy?”
“I’m her grandfather,” Jake says. “Jake Madigan.”
“I see. Does Stacey have insurance, Mr. Madigan?”
“No. We’ll pay cash today.”
“Not a problem. I’ll just need to get the rest of your information.” Jake has to give the woman his address, phone number, and all that stuff. My part in this interview is over. The saleswoman hardly looks at me until she finishes the paperwork. “And that should do it for now. There will be a short wait before the doctor can see you. In the meantime you can browse our selection.”
I wait until the woman has gone to glare up at Jake. “Chang? That’s the best you could come up with?”
“At least it isn’t Ling,” he says.
“Gee thanks, Grandpa.”
“Well you have to admit I don’t look like I could be the father to a ten-year-old Chinese girl.”
“I guess.” I sigh. “We really have to work these things out ahead of time.”
“Let’s hope it’s the last time. Come on, let’s go find you something. Try not to make it too expensive. I’m not made of money.”
“Right.” We wander around the store for a few minutes. Most of the glasses look the same to me. The only glasses I’ve ever worn are sunglasses, so I have no idea if the shape or styles matter.
Then I see the perfect pair. I stand on my toes, but they’re too high for me to reach. I point up at them; my hand trembles with excitement. “Let me see those.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes! They’re perfect.” The glasses in question have rectangular frames like most of the others that are a lot smaller than the ones I wear. The difference is they’re the same red as the ones Qiang gave me.
I take the old ones off to try the frames on. The lenses are glass, so I have to lean close to a mirror to see my face. I look slightly more grown up in these and except for the color they’re less conspicuous than Ming’s old glasses.
I turn to Jake. “What do you think?”
“I think you look ridiculous.”
“Well I like them. They’re cute.”
“Why would you want to wear those?”
I look down at my old glasses, the ones Qiang’s daughter wore. “She saved our lives. Her daughter’s going to die in prison because she helped us. I just want to honor her memory, you know?”
Jake considers this for a moment and then nods. “If that’s what you want, we’ll get them.”
“Thanks, Grandpa.”
***
The eye tests are almost as bad as those Dr. Ling subjected us to. Instead of jamming needles into my arm, the doctor blows puffs of air into my eyes. Next he tries to put eye drops in to dilate my eyes. I blink at the wrong time the first two times, so we have to do it a third time. That’s all before we get to the more traditional test where I stare at the wall to read letters off the chart.
I fail that test miserably; I only get to the third row of the chart. The doctor smiles and says, “Very good, Stacey.” As he writes down the results, I know he can’t believe how bad my eyes are. If I have to stay in this body, I’ll probably be blind by the time I’m twenty.
To finish, I stare into what looks like a bulkier Viewmaster so he can try different lenses. “Number one or number two?” he asks. There doesn’t seem to be much difference between them.
“Number two, I guess.” We repeat this a few times before he scribbles a prescription for me. I don’t know what the numbers mean, but I’m sure they’re bad.
By the end of the tests, I’m ready to go home and take a nap. I can’t just yet. I have to get my new glasses. The doctor talks to Jake, to tell him about the tests they ran to make sure I don’t have glaucoma or anything like that.
The doctor gives me a pair of roll-on sunglasses to wear outside until the eye drops he gave me wear off. Then he reaches into a pocket of his lab coat. From the pocket he takes out a red sucker. “And here’s a little something for being such a good patient.”
“Thank you,” I mumble.
“I’ll see you next year. OK, Stacey?”
“OK.” God, I hope not.
Since we already have the frames picked out, it’s not hard to get my new glasses started. The same saleswoman as before waits on us. She makes me try the frames on again, just to make sure I want them. “They look very pretty,” she says. To Jake she says, “It should only be an hour to get these made. Two at most. You can wait here if you want or—”
“I think we’ll come back in a couple hours,” Jake says. “I bet someone is really hankering for a milkshake about now.”
“Right,” I say without enthusiasm.
The sunglasses the doctor gave me don’t work very well in Ming’s old glasses. They unroll and slip down my face. The moment they get out of position, it’s like someone’s shined their high beams right into my eyes. I look down at the sidewalk all the way to a diner a block or two away.
“You all right, kid?” Jake asks.
“It’s these stupid drops he gave me.”
“Oh, those. They’ll wear off in a few hours.”
“Sucks until then.”
“Yeah, it does.”
We make it to the diner, where we take a booth in the darkest corner. I press myself as far into that corner as I can, though it’s still too bright. If the doctor thinks I’ll do this every year he can go fuck himself.
“Uh-oh, looks like someone isn’t very happy,” a woman says. I turn and see it’s our waitress.
“She just went to the eye doctor,” Jake says.
“Oh, that’s too bad. But you do have such pretty eyes.”
“Thanks,” I mumble.
“I think a chocolate milkshake would cheer her up,” Jake says. “And I’ll have a coffee. Black.”
“Coming right up.”
I wait until after the waitress is gone to glare at Jake again, though it’s a little difficult with my eyes dilated. “It’s bad enough everyone else does that, but do you have to too?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Talking to me like I’m a kid.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, you are a kid. I’m just staying in character as your doting grandpa.”
“Well maybe you could tone down the doting a little.”
The waitress shows up with our drinks. She put a curly straw in my shake, to make it more fun I guess. “Here you go, sweetheart. Enjoy!”
I suck on the straw and watch the shake curl up it, into my mouth. It’s been a while since I had a chocolate shake that wasn’t a diet one. Jake just sits there; he gapes at me until I snap, “What?”
“Seeing you like this, so little, it just makes me think—”
His voice trails off, so I prod, “Think what?”
“I was just thinking it’s too bad I’ll never have any real grandkids.”
“Oh,” I say and look down at the table. I think of Jennifer, Jake’s daughter who died four years earlier from cancer. His and Tess’s only child, who died before she could have any kids of her own. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Jake says. Unable to think of anything that would be of comfort, I slurp down my shake while he watches.
After the shake, Jake buys us each a slice of pie—apple for him and chocolate for me. We don’t say much until it’s time to go back over to the eye doctor to get my glasses.
I walk out of the store in my new glasses. I keep Ming’s in my pocket and hope someday I can give them back to her like Qiang wanted.
Chapter 19
With my eyes still affected by the eye drops, I doze for most of the cab ride home with my head against Jake’s arm. I’m not sure at what point I actually fall asleep. One moment I’m up against Jake and the next I wake up to find him carrying me. When I begin to stir, he shushes me. “It’s all right, kid. Go back to sleep.”
I decide to give in to this suggestion. Before I drift back into unconsciousness, I hear Tess say, “Poor little dear is all tuckered out.”
The next time I wake up, it’s dark. I roll over and fumble around to find my glasses on the nightstand. I slip the glasses on, which allows me to see it’s six-thirty. I’ve only been asleep for two hours, but it feels like much longer than that.
I crawl out of bed and grope around for the light switch. I have to remind myself it’s not in the same place as it used to be because I’m not in the same place I used to be. I find the switch at last and keep my eyes closed as it flicks on.
I open my eyes slowly to see if those drops have worn off. The light doesn’t sting quite so much this time. I blink a few times to make sure. Thank God that’s over with.
My stomach begins to rumble as I smell Tess’s pot roast. The table is already set in the dining room, which probably means she held dinner until I woke up. I follow my nose into the kitchen, where Tess stirs a bowl of mashed potatoes.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she says. “Are you feeling better now?”
“Yes. Is dinner ready yet?”
“Almost. Why don’t you go wait in the living room with Madison?”
I find Maddy on the couch; she clutches a pillow that’s nearly as big as her chest. She stares intently at the cartoons on the screen. She barely seems to notice when I sit down beside her. “What are you watching?” I ask.
“Spongebob,” she says.
“Is it any good?”
“It’s OK.” As the toy commercials come on, she finally turns to me. “Your glasses are pretty.”
“Thanks.”
“Was the eye doctor scary?”
“Not too bad. Just these drops he gave me were kind of annoying.”
“When Jake carried you in, I thought maybe—” Her voice trails off and I see her face redden as if on the verge of tears.
“Hey, it’s all right,” I say. I pat her back. “No one hurt me. My eyes were just a little tired from the drops. That’s all.”
“If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do,” she says. “I can’t do this alone.”
“You aren’t going to have to do it alone. I’ll help you through it. I promise.”
She turns to the TV when her show comes back on. This time she leans against me the same way I leaned against Jake. I think about what Dr. Palmer said, how this is traumatizing Maddy. It is a big shock to her system, one she might never recover from.
When Tess calls us for dinner, Maddy hops off the couch in a heartbeat and races into the dining room as fast as her short legs can carry her. That is until she sees Tess has put a phone book down on Maddy’s seat to help her reach the table. “I don’t need to sit on anything,” Maddy whines. “I’m not a baby.”
“I just want to make sure you’re comfortable, dear.”
“No booster seats,” Maddy says and then swipes the phone book to the floor.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Tess says, her voice hard enough that I flinch.
“Sorry.” Maddy retrieves the phone book to hand it back to Tess, who tucks it under her arm.
“It’s all right. Just sit down, dear.”
Maddy can reach the table—barely. She has to be pushed in all the way and even then the table comes up to her chin. At least Tess doesn’t try to put a bib around her neck, which would set Maddy off for sure.
I sit across from Maddy, the table not so high on me, but still not what I’m used to. To set a good example for Maddy, I sit calmly and wait for the adults to sit down. Jake comes in a minute later, still on the phone. “I’ll call you back in about a half-hour,” he says.
“Who was that?” I ask.
“Woods. They found that school where you were being held.”
Tess clears her throat as she sits down. One of her rules is not to discuss business at the dinner table. “Now everyone, bow your heads and let’s say grace.”
I see Maddy’s cheeks redden at that last word as she no doubt thinks of Grace. Her cheeks are still red all during the prayer, though she doesn’t cry. But when Tess ladles some potatoes onto Maddy’s plate, Maddy makes a disgusted face. “Yuck, potatoes.”
“But you love mashed potatoes,” Tess says.
“Do not.”
“Well, what do you want?”
“Ice cream.”
“That’s for dessert, sweetheart. Eat your potatoes and then later you can have some ice cream.”
“No! I want it now!” Maddy struggles to move her chair back and then hops down to the floor.
“Madison, you don’t leave the table until you’ve eaten your dinner.”
“I don’t want dinner. I want ice cream!”
“Young lady, that is enough. Sit down right now or you won’t get anything to eat at all.”
“You can’t tell me what to do! You’re not my mommy!” Maddy scurries towards the kitchen, but she’s not fast enough. Tess grabs her before she can reach the doorway and hefts Maddy into the air. Maddy’s stubby legs kick futilely at the air. “Lemme go! I want ice cream.”
I stare down at my plate, not sure what to do. As Maddy’s father I should be the one to do what Tess is, but as a ten-year-old girl I don’t have the authority to make Maddy sit down and eat her dinner. So I do nothing and feel lousy.
By the time she’s seated again, Maddy’s face is red and soaked with tears. “Go on and eat your dinner,” Tess says. “Unless you want to go to your room for the night.”
Maddy dips her spoon into the potatoes. She draws the spoon back towards her mouth. At the last second, she flings the spoonful of potatoes over Tess’s shoulder, against the wall. Before Maddy can get another spoonful, Tess seizes her by the wrist. This sets Maddy into a full-fledged tantrum. She begins to shriek so loud I have to cover my ears.
“That’s enough, young lady,” Tess says. She starts to carry Maddy away, impervious to Maddy’s thrashing.
I get up to follow them, but Jake grabs my wrist. “Let them go,” he says.
“But—”
“Sit down and finish your supper. Tess can handle it.”
I can hear Maddy’s screams even from upstairs. It reminds me of Dr. Ling’s lab, except nothing so sinister is going on here. It’s just a tantrum, like the ones Maddy used to throw at my dinner table. Back then I carried her upstairs to her room and locked her in for the night. It didn’t feel good then; it feels even less good now.
But when Jake lets my wrist go, I sit down to eat my dinner.
***
Jake, Tess, and I watch reruns of The Golden Girls until eight-thirty. Then Tess pats me on the back. “Time for you to get ready for bed.”
“Already?”
Tess clucks her tongue. “Don’t you start with me, young lady.”
“Sorry.”
“I want you to make sure you brush your teeth before you go to bed. We don’t want you getting cavities in that beautiful smile.”
“OK.”
I start to trudge up the stairs. Tess calls after me, “I put a nightgown on the nightstand for you. Try not to wake Madison.”
“I won’t.”
I ease open the bedroom door so I won’t wake Maddy. As Tess promised, there’s a nightgown on the nightstand. I leave the door open a crack to provide a little light while I change. The nightgown is
a Garfield one that’s a couple of sizes too big on me. I try not to trip over the hem of it as I shut the door and then crawl into bed.
After I’ve put my glasses on the nightstand, I hear Maddy stir. “Stace?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” I whisper. “I know what happened.”
“You do?”
I slide across the bed to snuggle up against her. That will make it easier for us to talk without Tess or Jake being able to hear us. “Maddy, you can’t let Grace go. You’ve got to hold on to that love. Then you’ll always remember who you really are.”
“What if I never see her again? Or if I do, what if I’m still a little kid?”
“Grace is always going to love you, no matter how old you are or what you look like.”
Maddy sniffles and then says, “Sometimes I forget. I have to focus really, really hard to remember her face or her voice or her kiss—”
She turns her head to cry into her pillow. I rub her back and try to think of something to say. “Hey, you remember that picture you made in your cell?”
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe you should make another one.”
“That might work.” She surprises me with a kiss on my cheek. “Thanks, Stace.”
“You’re welcome.”
“G’night, Stace,” she says with a yawn. Just like that she’s out again.
Chapter 20
The next morning there’s a knock on the door. “Girls, time to get up,” Tess calls in a singsong voice. She opens the door a crack. “Rise and shine.”
I groan as Tess turns on the light. After I scramble to find my glasses, I see it’s eight o’clock in the morning. I’ve been asleep for almost eleven hours. I roll out of bed and nearly trip over the hem of my nightgown in the process. Tess is there to steady me before I can fall. “Don’t worry, today we’re going to buy you both some new clothes.”
“Goody,” I say, never much of a morning person. Tess, who got up early the majority of twelve years to see Jennifer off to school, is a lot more chipper.
“I had another accident,” Maddy says, the shame evident in her voice.
“It’s all right, dear. I’ll clean it up later. First, it’s time for you two to get a bath.”
Chances Are Omnibus (Gender Swap Fiction) Page 37